


put on your blue kirtle, little farmer boy

by Letterblade



Series: and if you wish to ransom me [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Death Fix, Consensual Mind Control, F/M, Gratuitous Tam Lin, Lance is deeply depressed in the s8 epilogue and you cannot convince me otherwise, Oriande Trials, Season 8 compliant, Touches of Suicidal Ideation, more or less
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 18:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17248946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letterblade/pseuds/Letterblade
Summary: Lance goes to Oriande.





	put on your blue kirtle, little farmer boy

**Author's Note:**

> This is the canon-compliant slightly bittersweet fix-it that I immediately thought of after finishing s8 and immediately had to write. Even if it took me a bit to finish it. Beta credit to mllelaurel.

Lance has thought, in the back of his head, about what might happen the next time he feels that strange tingling on his face, so he’s done things. Quietly. Annie next door will feed the menagerie if he leaves a note, long as he needs—she’d done it during the long stay on Altea for the anniversary. Acxa is intimidating as hell, maybe, but she’s wonderfully un-nosy and knows a lot, and if he earnestly requests a favor to keep him up to date on survey information, he likes staying in the know even if he’s not a Paladin anymore, well, she usually follows through. Sam Holt eyed him curiously when he asked for all the readings about the white hole guarding Oriande, but maybe he figured it was a Thing He Does To Cope, maybe he just indulged any scientific interest even from dumb people, but he dished. Lance doesn’t understand half of the data, but he _has_ them. For reference. If he needs them.

It’s not like he doesn’t have various Things He Does To Cope, possibly including the menagerie, but he hates it when people get that vaguely pitying look in their eyes about it. The oh-no-poor-dear-let-him-be-strange-in-peace look. He doesn’t like that. The old team, at least, mostly doesn’t give it to him when they meet, even though they maybe had the most reason to. Him and Allura weren’t entirely common knowledge, and honestly, now, that’s a relief. He can just be that weird guy telling stories. It doesn’t have to be personal. It keeps the lumps in his throat down, his voice flowing.

At any rate, he has his Things, and he’s made friends with the local shuttleport master and thrown around his Paladin cred a lot, and every night he talks a little to the sky before he goes to sleep, just in case. It might be a whole chain of wishful-thinking logic, but it’s the chain that keeps him moving. She’d remade everything, so there’s a little of her in everything, so she’s there in those stars or that tree or whatever. And she’d smoothed her thumbs over his cheeks for a reason, and Blue had stirred deep against his heart that night for a reason, and his marks had glowed for a reason. A few years ago, he would’ve puffed up his chest about being some Chosen, but now he just quietly hopes it’s true because otherwise things might just be a random chain of events dragging him along and maybe someday either his spirit will give out or he’ll do the mature thing, which some people like hinting at, and move the fuck on.

There’s no response to _that_. You don’t move on from someone like her. You just—don’t.

Weeks pass. Months. He dreams of white light and tears on his face, so often. He gets tattoos woven into the old burn scars on his back, blue and white feathered wings with Blue’s head over his spine. By the time they finally stop itching, Acxa calls him to say that one of the Coalition’s survey teams is charting a quasar, and he spends a while poring over an astronomy wiki for dummies and the old white hole data to see how similar they are.

Then the news comes that the quasar is irregular. Only one jet. Smaller size and higher energy than any quasar on record.

He shoves all the data pads in a bag along with some clothes and paces the warm starry night jittering. Goes to the tree she revived, leans his face in it, breathes in the flowers. Will there be another sign? Will something stir? Or should he just—go?

He thinks of that story Abuelo used to say about god and the rescue ships, and looks at his lightless blue markings with his selfie cam, and leaves a note for Annie. And the datapad with all his I-love-yous to be unsealed if he never comes back. It would look stupid if he told them all these vague ideas and nothing panned out, after all, and people would probably tell him he’s chasing false hope.

 

* * *

 

The ship he’s cadged from the shuttleport is tiny, reminding him more of the Garrison’s old sims than anything else, and handles like a pickup truck, but there’s stars filling the screen and vacuum under his feet and he feels like something’s rattling loose in his chest that’s been bogged down for months. Choring and stories—there’s a stick under his hand now, and he may have never lived up to Actual Superhuman Keith Kogane, but he’s a pilot and his heart beats.

It’s a long trip, but he can get there with the new teludav relays without having to ask favors from people who might have well-meaning and extensive questions—extra bad if anything got back to Shiro—and he has plenty of food, at least. It might be as boring as the damn road trip, but every star and nebula past his screen feels like they’re leading him deeper, somewhere. Or he’s just going space-mad. Again. Sometimes he’s not even sure he’s in his body, sitting still in the pilot’s chair for hours—maybe he’s drifting into the mess underlying the universe, like on the way to Honerva’s mind. Or something stranger.

He picks up the not-quasar on his sensors hours before he gets there, and sees the blip getting steadily larger, and larger.

He pulls up Sam’s data.

It matches.

It matches, and he creeps into visual range. No field of dead ships, no warnings, just the disk of roaring light spinning up from empty space. The jet, searing. The same interference patterns, the same massive energy.

He can see his reflection in the dull glass of the little ship, faint, and light’s blooming on his cheeks.

“Okay,” he breathes. The ship hangs there, just outside the border where he’s likely to lose power. “I’m here.” He licks his lips, pulls off his helmet, puts a water pouch and a protein bar in his face. “I’m coming.”

He’s got his old armor with the jetpacks, freshly tuned up by Hunk a few weeks ago. No bayard. Fifty feet of space line on his hip, spit and a prayer. Momentum carries a guy a long way without friction, but it’s a risky dive even without the white hole there.

He works slow, methodical. There’s not a living soul for ten thousand light years. He’s got his time. He turns off the ship’s janky pocket grav generator, feeds that power into the engines, adjusts to zero G. It’s been a while. More things shake loose in his chest, heart pounding faster. Bits of his life feel like they’re rubbing up against each other, sharp-edged—months as a landlubber chasing chickens, months in this skinsuit and armor pressed against him with his stomach floating in his gut and the raw adrenaline of combat stabbing through him. He hadn’t thought of himself as rattled by that sort of thing, but, well, he files it away.

He clears his path to the airlock, then programs in the engine burn, aiming dead to center of the white hole. Blasts it.

The ship barrels forward, picking up decent momentum by the time it slides into the interference and the consoles start flickering. By the time he’s slid into the airlock, opened it to space with that little whiff of ice crystals and life, and balanced himself like the bullet in the gun. By the time the autopilot correction shuts down and it’s straight-up coasting, because otherwise one wrong lean of his weight when he loads himself in might tip the ship just slightly off course and send him wide. Fatally wide if his armor gives out. Or if it’s just so long a burn back to the ship that he dies of thirst. The possibility is faint, crystalline, untroubling.

“Stop jumping out of ships you suicidal motherfucker,” he whispers, breath puffing on his helmet, just as he had to Keith that one time, and kicks off into the void.

 

* * *

 

The light from the white hole grows blinding, and Lance darkens his helmet plate until it’s solid like eclipse glasses instead the sun is all around him.

The energy pouring off it pelts at him, and Lance sculls with bursts of his jets like he’s swimming against the current, careful not to burn them dry.

The burning light grows dark eyes, swirls of cheeks, muzzle, mane, and Lance feels his face tingle and swims unafraid into the lion’s jaws. And soft, inane, he whispers _a diamond in the rough_ into the small echo of his helmet.

As he passes through, as the light fades, he keeps moving, and for a moment before he manages to find his helmet controls, there’s nothing but darkness. He’s floating, easy and buoyant, but there’s a strange lightness even when his jets flick off. An ease. It’s like one of those flying dreams where you just _go_ , and he feels a smile bubble up on his face.

He’s here.

His faceplate clears to show a sea of stars, nebulae shimmering pink and gold, stellar nurseries like spatters of hope, teeming with light. Before him hangs a white sun. Planets hang around it, moons around them, bright jewels, spinning slowly. Not the floating rocks of old Oriande, burned into his memory as they fell into fire and void, but a solar system. Almost normal, except he can’t get a close look—it’s not Earth, it’s not New Altea—it might be the size of that big orrery at the science museum that he could climb on when he was little—he flies into it like a bird.

Blue light trails in his wake, and he can play among the stars.

He remembers lying together in his narrow Atlas bunk, her hair spilling over his bare arm as they whispered in the deep dark of morning. Trading dreams. The ones worth trading. _Since I was a little girl, long as I could remember, I’d dream of flying in space. Like it was a nullgrav pool, and I could float with no helmet and all my hair out, and the stars would sparkle across my skin. And sometimes I’d run across little planets with my bare feet or hold stars in my hands, and it was warm and soft like clouds._

He takes one careless breath, exhales, reaches up, and unlatches his helmet.

He might survive twenty or thirty ticks in hard vacuum. The paladin helmet can recreate its internal gas balance on repressurization in two and a half doboshes, during which time he’ll lose consciousness. Risk of brain damage or death might take another dobosh. Holding his breath would rupture his lungs.

There’s no puff of flash-frozen ice crystals as he lifts his helmet, and soft murmurs reach his ears, and he breathes deep, warm and soft like clouds.

He tucks his helmet under his arm and kicks off towards the solar system, spinning long and slow just because he _can_. The music of space echoes in his ears, and there’s starlight along his armor, and he’s smiling. Just this—just this was worth it. Sharing her childhood dream. “Thank you,” he breathes, and his voice echoes out strangely in the breathable universe.

The stars thrum in answer, and then the music of the spheres coalesces into words, heavy and deep and subliminal.

_Show me your home._

Lance blinks. “I…can I give you more than one answer?” His old bedroom up under the eaves, the one he’d shared with Marco, and the squashy couch in the living room, and all the little nooks and crannies and the way to climb up to the roof. “Man, I feel like a guy should have an answer for that, but…” His new little house, half-rebuilt from where some rubble had squashed the south side during the occupation, and the way the chickens would scatter round his feet when he went out to feed them, and Kaltenecker’s stall. “But how do I…”

The Castle, lounge, kitchen, cow holodeck, the side room where Pidge set up her video games, his pigsty that he still isn’t sure he got everything out of. The Atlas, his room there a lot tidier, and her room with the juniberry on her table, and the situation room, and the little paladins’ lounge where everyone huddled waiting for the end. Blue’s cockpit, Red’s, and his heart aches. Havana, as it was, as it is, the tears stinging his eyes when he finally came back to the battered city, Veradero Beach with and without the new crater turning one end of it into a loop slowly filling in with sand. New Altea, the times he’s visited, in the high green foothills, and the fresh new little houses and big echoey community halls with nothing but children’s hand-paintings on the walls, and okay, the statue is a bit much, but it’s _her_ , she’s worth it.

_I see your home. Show me your love._

Everything tumbles through his mind before he can even draw breath.

The spark in her eyes and the slightly-too-smooth-to-be-human silk of her skin and the thickness of her hair and the points of her ears under his fingers and the smell of her when she’s clean and the smell of her when she’s sweaty after a battle and the way he could barely feel the muscles in her arm but she could still pick him up like a feather and the taste of her lips and the way they fit together in the late dark nights. The way she’d put up her hair with that little twist of transparent metal and the way her earrings would float off their anchor studs and the way she wore a skintight suit like it was nothing. The way she’d cradle the mice or lay her hands delicately on the teludav orbs or snap her whip or dive out into space like an arrow or dig her heels in to yeet a guy across the room. The way she’d clutch at the back of his neck with her nails when they kissed sometimes, like she was afraid he’d disappear too, and sometimes he’d wonder how long Alteans live and how real that fear was, but then she’d gone and—beaten him to it—

The way her face would light up when she _really_ smiled and the grief that lurked under the sparkling surface ready to swallow her whole and the boundless drive to _fix_ this poor battered universe she’d inherited and the slot-eyed stare that would break through the diplomatic facade at the whinier Coalition delegates and also him a lot sometimes and her delight at the silly little things and the softness in her eyes around his family and the way she hadn’t said it back until the end and it hadn’t even mattered and everything, everything that he knew of her, and he isn’t foolish enough to pretend it’s all of her, nowhere near close, years of memories of her home coiled deep within that she so rarely talked about but he loved that too—

He finally draws breath, and worries that he didn’t answer the last one right, and his heart is pounding, aching, because—she’s not the only—he doesn’t know how it was meant? His family pours in anyway. Every one of them and all the stupid fights with his siblings and the little ones climbing on him and the way Rachel had glared at him from the kids’ table. And Keith and Shiro and Hunk and Pidge, and Coran who never got to say goodbye and took it with a stiffer upper lip than Lance had ever seen, and all the menagerie, Romelle, Matt Holt’s stupid face, Keith’s hot mom and uptight boss, Annie, Griffin and the rest, Hunk’s family, Shay, and he floats there in giddy daydream space which he isn’t sure exists and wonders, brief and strange, how he could ever feel lonely with everyone in his life.

But he does. Consumingly.

Still he loves them. To his toes.

He scrubs his glove across his face and doesn’t even know how to begin answering with words, because he’d love the entire universe that she’d made because she made it, and he’d love all these people anyway because they’re them, and if he’s coming here for her should he love just her?

_I see your love. Come to me._

 

* * *

 

The white star at the heart of the solar system is the only place Lance can think of to go, and the planets and moons whirl by like glittering jewels, perfect and distracting.

As he nears, he can see the coils of light like a great spiral, and the heat from it ghosts across the surface of his armor and toasts his face like he’s sitting near a bonfire, but if this was a real star, he’d be ash at this distance, wouldn’t he?

He puts his helmet on, just in case, and kicks against the soft void, and fires his jets.

The star roars up in his vision, and heat thrums against his skin, and for a few moments, he’s afraid. Really afraid. It actually claws at his belly, quickens his pulse—is he just going to cook alive here because he fucked up, because he missed something, dying like he lived—he’s hyperventilating against the curve of his helmet as blinding light rises—

He tumbles out on something solid.

It’s cool, and the light in his face is gentle, and he claws at something that gives a little, and rolls over, and takes stock.

The glittering universe from before stretches at the horizon, faint behind the blue veil of an atmosphere, and the white sun hangs in the sky, and his hands are in grass and flowers.

He feels his heart clench, plucks off his helmet again, scrambles to his feet.

Rolling hills. Juniberries, masses of pink scattered off to the horizon. Nebulae climb like habitat rings, a faint echo of Altea-that-was. Scattered trees, shrubs, other flowers.

Earth flowers.

Little patches of pansies, like his favorite park back in Havana. A big old oak spreading wide.

He runs for it, presses his hands against the trunk, buries his face in the bark.

A soft breeze stirs. The scent of juniberries fills his nose, swells in his chest.

“I wish you could see it,” he murmurs into the tree. “New Altea. Fields like this as far as you can see. The city’s small, they’re still building, but it’s beautiful, it’s all these little bubble-houses that shine in the sun. So much of the planet is wild. The waterfalls, the way the air smells when there’s green as far as you can see. I went on this safari with Coran, Keith and Pidge came too, we saw this whole bumble of klanmürls…”

The leaves rustle.

Lance squeaks, turns.

A shimmer of white moves through the grove.

Lance holds very, very still.

The beast—the Guardian—slips between the trees. Not a lion now, but something deerlike. Spreading antlers with strings of light between them, glimmering white, a long silky tail that flicks from side to side. It’s studying him, head low.

Lance breathes slow and shallow and holds out his hand.

It steps closer. Long, delicate legs. Two paces, three.

A soft muzzle touches his palm, just lightly.

Its eyes are bright blue with pink light in the pupils.

Lance can’t help a shaky gasp, and the beast startles, tossing its head with a jingle of light. He stills, makes soft shushing noises. “It’s okay,” he breathes. “It’s me. It’s Lance.”

Headtilt. Another toss, the stamp of a cloven hoof.

“Please stay?”

Two lashes of its tail.

Lance swallows down a thick pang of grief. “Or…or is this…is this another trial? Is that why you’re here?”

It rears and bolts like someone’s fired the starting gun at a race, and Lance yelps and takes off after it without a thought. It zigs and zags, trailing light in its wake, and for a moment, despair clenches in his chest along with his pounding heart. He’s no slump, his legs are long, the ground isn’t soft, but—but—

He kicks off and fires his jets.

The Guardian bounds to the left, and he crashes down a few feet away, tumbles in soft grass and bruised flowers. Winces, rolls to his feet, shakes off the last hesitation.

He’s already chosen how to play this. If he’s meant to let it—her?—go, then he’s already failed, and nobody’s told him, and he might as well see it through.

The rhythm of leap and jet sinks back into his bones. His heart’s drumming, and he’s settled back into the heavy deep breathing of—well, not battle, he’d never harm this creature, but the chase. Kick off, soar twenty feet with his stomach flipping in freefall, take the landing in a deep crouch. Exertion twangs deep in his thighs, used to nothing more than quiet yoga in the evening—it’s his arms that’ve been getting a workout with the menagerie. Another missed pounce, and another.

He can be patient. He’s got this. There’s a beat to the Guardian’s hooves, a coil of tension in its haunches when it’s about to spring. He paces it, drives the chase onto the open hillside where the trees can’t interfere. Jumps, spreads his limbs wide to slow his fall for that split second to see which way it jumps, skids another ten feet on another pulse of the jets, and falls hard onto its back.

Its fur is warm and soft against his face.

It rears, and he wraps all four limbs around it and doesn’t let go. “I’ve got you,” he gasps, nonsense on impulse. “I’ve got you, I’m here, it’s okay.”

The Guardian bucks a circle, the white-sun brilliance of its fur blinding against his face, and runs, and he can’t see which way they’re going, and he holds on with all his strength.

Then there’s a burst of light, and it shrinks beneath him, and he tumbles to the ground with a yelp. A thin, high-pitched noise reaches his ears, and there’s something scrabbling against his armor, and he curls close around a little Altean mouse, tufting ears waving, scampering for freedom along his arm.

Lance grins. He’s played chase with Plachu’s surly mousey butt when he didn’t want a bath—he’s got this. The Guardian does that squiggly mouse roll under his arm, and he heads it—her?—off at the pass, juggling to his other arm, yelping and rolling as it almost escapes his fingertips. Finally pulling it to his chest, enveloping it in a finger-cave, so careful not to squeeze the soft little body.

Paws flail, but it doesn’t bite—which, to be fair to Plachu’s surly mousey butt, he only did that one time, but it was memorable. Bright beady blue eyes stare between his fingers, and he bundles it to his face and kisses the top of its little head. “I love you. God, I love you. I can’t let go.”

His hands burst open.

The light is blinding. Power flares up around him, and instead of a mouse, he’s holding a lion, searing white against the arcing sky, bowling him over. The roar echoes in his bones, and he squawks, clutches thick fur. He’s clinging to its belly, barrel-chest and mane almost too wide to get his arms around, and it rolls, bulls at him with hind legs like a cat with a toy.

Bright blue eyes with pink flecks.

Fangs sink into his shoulder like fingers under his skin, hard light without blood, and pain sparks down his arm, and he gets handfuls of the mane in a death grip and scrabbles for purchase with his legs. Armor slides off fur. Roll again, and he’s underbelly as the guardian runs, dragging him, legs banging against the ground.

“Please,” he gasps, burying his face in the mane. “You’re glorious. I don’t want to fight you—just—please—”

The lion growls. Shakes him a little in its jaws, and he makes something between a gasp and a sob, doesn’t bleed, doesn’t let go.

Then the light fades.

 _She’s_ pressed against him, gold flower earrings dangling, in that lovely cream dress. Silky dark skin, pupils with just that little fleck of pink, wide and bright. Just as she was. She’s warm and soft and her heart beats and he feels his eyes well up.

“Lance,” she breathes, and kisses him. Eager. Her lips are just a little chapped, imperfect. Her hands slide down his chest. He’s still clutching her tight, and his breath is rattling in his lungs, and he _hurts_ like a knife is sliding into his chest.

“Oh god…you’re…”

“Lance.” A smile tugging at her mouth. “Less talking, more kissing. Please. It’s been so long…”

His hand trembles through her hair, tumbled loose and silky. If this…if this is the last time…

He grabs the knife and rams it deeper and doesn’t let go of her.

“This isn’t you.” His voice is cracked, his breath ragged against her lips. “You’ve become…you’re so much more than this now. If you weren’t, you would never have needed to leave. So please…please let me see you.”

She makes one of those disgruntled little squeaks, runs her hand over his lips and chin. “I’m right here, Lance. You can be with me again. Like it never happened.”

Certainty settles like a hard knot in his belly. “I love you. I will always love you with everything I am.” He swallows, raspy. “But this isn’t you.”

She tilts her head to one side, puzzled.

Her face cracks down the middle and splits into light.

He grits his teeth against the anguish that’s trying to bubble out of his throat. And keeps holding on.

The light dissolves. Her body dissolves. Pours into his chest between his curled arms.

She’s gone.

 

* * *

 

There’s some time that Lance can’t quite account for after that. Sideways time, where he’s kneeling in an endless starry space, where there’s a spear of light through his body. But when he can account for things again, he’s lying in that grassy field, flat on his back. He’s numb. He isn’t sure how he’ll move again, or why. His face is wet, tears running down into his hair. Nothing stirs all around, not a flicker of white.

“Allura,” he calls, one last time. Just to feel her name on his tongue if it’s all he has left. He wonders if he even still has the markings, but can’t muster the will to check.

_Lance._

The voice is a whisper of wind, echoing from one tree to another, and his eyes widen.

_You were right. I’ve become so much different than I was._

He manages one breath before they become too fast, too shallow, chest tightening.

_I’ll never be at your side like I used to be. I’ll never live in this reality. But you’ve passed the trials of Oriande-that-is-now, and some small part of me is in you. I only hope that will be enough._

He raises his hand, and his voice comes out in a wet croak. “You still say my name like a rich person. Allura. It’s _you_. Goddess or Guardian or part of the universe or whatever…you really led me here. I can see you again. It’s enough.”

Light blooms between his fingers. Light takes the shape of a finger, two, three. From great beams to a delicate hand. She coalesces, one limb at a time, shrinks. Her form flickers—claws, fur against his hand, hair like a mane, tail wafting, lion, girl, each limned in white upon the colors of the world. Glassy, transparent, her touch solid energy like a particle barrier. Just looking at her sends goosebumps tingling down his arms—like the old Guardian, like the raw red-moon plane in Red’s heart, like she’s impossibly huge and impossibly strange even as she pours herself into one small form. Even as her skin darkens, it luminesces. Her hair’s loose and she’s wearing patterns of light and she’s so beautiful he can hardly breathe.

“Oh, Lance,” she whispers, and her voice is almost coming just from her mouth instead of everywhere, even if it still has strange overtones, and he pulls her hand to his mouth and kisses her knuckles. Her skin tingles against his lips, and she makes a small, fond noise, and her other hand threads electric through his hair. “Thank you. Thank you for coming, thank you for being clever and brave and kind. I couldn’t make it any easier than this, and I kept worrying you’d fail and I’d never see you again…”

“I didn’t.” He rubs his cheek against her hand. “I’m here. I’m yours.”

She tugs at his hand, pulls him up to sitting, and piles into his lap in glorious spirals of cosmic energy, and kisses him, and for a moment before he closes his eyes, he realizes some of the light is pouring from his own cheeks, his own body.

 

* * *

 

The temple of this Oriande, the ancient ship, is mossy and cracked stone, and one of the pillars is missing, and it’s a monument that will never fly again.

Lance and Allura lie curled on the grassy courtyard, his face in her bare breasts, her thumb rubbing circles over one softly pulsing mark on his cheek, and she hums, quiet and aimless and not really in key.

Lance isn’t sure how much time has passed. He feels weightless, neither hungry nor thirsty, and he hadn’t realized how much black weight had squatted in his chest, banded and squeezed around his heart, globbed up his limbs—how bad it had been until it was gone. He’d thought he was getting by, finding happiness. He _is_ happy now, so happy his skin is buzzing and he’s breathing without effort and he can’t stop smiling.

They’ve loved each other in every way they could be loved and then some, for longer than simple bodies could possibly sustain, in places that might have been Oriande or their minds or the starry skin of the universe itself, and now they’re just skin-on-skin in a pile of Allura’s too-long-to-exist hair, and she’s half-dozing, maybe, or distracted by something cosmic. He isn’t sure which. He lifts his head, with great effort, to kiss the point of an ear, and she meeps and mumbles.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

She laughs softly, bouncing him where he’s put his face back down. “They’re worth more than _that_ by now, surely?”

“You look all spacy,” he slurs into her chest.

“I…mm. I’m still getting the hang of this.” She toys with his hair gently. “I’m an…instance of myself, I suppose? I’m too big to fit here, in a single reality, in a linear consciousness, but part of me can pretend to?”

Lance lets a hand wander over her chest, belly, curve of her hip. “Do you…even have a body, or is this all…”

“Magic?” She nods, breathes out a sigh. “Oriande, in any form, is a special place. I can exist here in ways I can’t anywhere else. And you can perceive me in ways you can’t anywhere else. If you—” Her hand tightens on his shoulder. “There had to be trials, Lance. Real ones. I…I’m so glad you passed. I couldn’t not…”

Lance wraps a leg around hers, clinging. “If I hadn’t…?”

“We…could never have met again.”

He makes one hiccuping noise into her skin and contracts around her, struggling to breathe for a moment. “No pressure, Lance.”

She huffs, like she’s trying to sound light, but her nails are digging in a little, sending sparks of joy even through his wrung-out haze. “But you did pass. Here in Oriande, you can see me.” She pauses, stilling, thoughtful. “I just…”

“Mm?” He picks his head up.

“You couldn’t have passed if you didn’t love more of the universe than me,” she murmurs.

Lance blinks for a moment, then knows, somewhere deep in his heart, and the old aches twinge. “So that we’d never have another alchemist like Honerva.” He catches her other hand. “You’re going to tell me to leave, aren’t you?”

She squeezes his hand in return, a little crushing. “There’s no rule against coming back. Just…just don’t live only here, Lance. Please. Your friends, your family…”

Lance breathes out, twinges fading, and buries his face in her. “This is gonna be a lot of commuting. I am so gonna use up my former-defender-of-the-universe free teludav coupons.” He blinks. “Wait. Am I—I’m an alchemist now, aren’t I? Can I do the teludav thing?”

“Oh—yes! You should be able to. Well, with training.”

“Okay, that’ll help…” He breathes again, easier. Girlfriend here, the rest of the universe there…something pricks at his eyes. “Allura…”

She strokes his hair, pulls him a little more on top of her.

“This isn’t…damn it. I know. The universe isn’t fair. But you deserve…you deserve to see them too. You deserve to see the universe you helped make, properly, with eyes and hugging and—you—you deserve to _live_.”

“Oh, Lance,” she breathes, resigned.

“My family really liked you, they miss you, and _Coran_ , and the others, and—sorry. Sorry.” He bites his lip. “I should be happy. I _am_ happy, I’m so happy I could burst, to see you again—”

“I had to. Or they wouldn’t have…at all.”

“I know.” He feels his shoulders shake, once. “I know. It’s just…”

She kisses the top of his head, soothing, and the warm breeze of Oriande-that-is-now blows, and the scent of juniberries and her skin fills his nose.

His mind trips over its own stray thoughts.

“Wait,” he blurts, and picks his head up again. “Wait. If I’m—you said—I’m an alchemist, now, right, I’m your alchemist, you said a small part of yourself was inside me—”

Her brows furrows. “Yes, but it’s not—”

“Can the rest of you be?” His tongue feels like rubber, like he can’t make the words fast enough. “This you, I mean, this, the instance, you don’t have a body except for magic, can you take mine, can you see through me?”

Her eyes widen. She sits up, spilling him a little, and he paws frantically at her shoulders. She splays a hand on his cheek, something tender and almost horrified in her face. “That would be…I’d be controlling your mind to do it. Using you. Like…”

He folds his hand over hers. “I want you to. I want this. _Please_. Stay in me. It’s not—I wish I could give you more, your own body, but—but let’s see the universe together, Allura. You shouldn’t have to be alone except for me.”

“You’d—” Her eyes shine, wet. “You really…” She makes some small, strangled noise, and kisses him, urgent and like she can’t sort out her words, and he kisses back, earnest and pliant.

She pulls back after a long while, and takes a few deep and shaky breaths, and catches both his hands in hers, firm. “Please don’t offer this lightly.”

He lifts his chin. “I’m not.”

“I’d be able to see through your eyes any time I wanted.”

“I want you to.” He squeezes her hands. “Well, maybe not when I’m, like, peeing? You don’t need to see that, it’s not that exciting.”

She snorts an entirely undignified laugh. “I’m not going to watch you pee, no. I’d be able to see your thoughts, your dreams, any time I wanted.”

“Yeah, but do you want to? My thoughts are, like, all over the place all the time, and also do you want to see that many, uh…wet dreams about you?”

She laughs again, and squeezes his hands tight. “Well, _that_ doesn’t sound so bad. They could always be lucid.”

“Oh damn.” Lance feels his face heat, grins. “Okay, so this _also_ means we could be together when I’m asleep and I’ll probably also have less nightmares? I don’t see a downside to that.”

“No nightmares.” Her eyes spark, protective. “I’ll eat them.”

“Om nom nom.” He’s still grinning like an idiot.

“I’d be able to control your _body_ , Lance. Use you like a puppet. Any time I wanted.”

“Okay, but is it weird that that’s kinda hot?” Lance mumbles, ducking his head.

“ _Lance_.”

He swallows, lifts his head, and musters every ounce of seriousness he can. “I _trust_ you, Allura. You’re not my enemy, you’re not some witch. I know you’re not going to hurt me. And if we can talk inside my head or whatever, you’ll know the moment I’m scared or just want to do something myself or whatever.”

The worry in her face softens. “You…” She leans in to kiss his forehead. “Oh, dear one.”

“Love you,” he murmurs.

“Love you,” she breathes in answer.

“I want this,” he says again. “I give you this, willingly.”

“Absolutely, knowingly, willingly?” she asks, squaring her shoulders.

“Absolutely, knowingly, willingly,” he echoes. “Yes. I consent to your possession.”

 

* * *

 

Lance sits, naked and alone in the temple courtyard, feet on his thighs, because well, if he _can_ do a full lotus, what better time is there to do it than when getting ready to channel a god who is also your girlfriend into your body?

Lance draws on himself with glowing fingers, trailing blue-white light. His heart, his belly. His legs, his arms. All hers. He stretches, folds both his hands behind him over the nape of his neck, and feels his spine light up, brain stem to tailbone, all his nervous system tingling with _her_.

Lance lets his hands settle on his knees, and closes his eyes, and takes a deep slow breath, and it settles down to the girdle of his hips in that particular soul-deep way it does when you’re in full lotus.

Then he lays his hands on the orbs that flank him, half-buried in the cracked ground, and the rusty old teludav flares one last time, and the gate opens white and ethereal in the sky. Not to this reality or any other. Not a gash in spacetime. Just an echo, a summoning, a celebration.

The white lion steps through, grand and huge, mane flaring, and opens jaws that could swallow Lance alive, and he tilts his head back and opens his mouth in answer, teeth bared in a roaring smile.

She pours herself inside.

His whole body lights up like fire, toes to fingertips to skull, and he trembles there on the pavement, but it doesn’t hurt. It’s like orgasm, exultant, and he isn’t quite sure how long it takes to settle, and when it does, he’s lying there again, legs a little sore like he’d jittered hard out of the pose, and this time he’s smiling.

_Lance, can you hear me?_

Her voice, echoing in his mind. Her being, wrapped around him like firm strong arms and a cloud of soft hair. He reaches for her, holds her in return, speaks without moving his lips. _Loud and clear. Welcome home._

 _Oh_ , she squeaks, and he feels the achy-happiness welling in her as she settles into his nerves. _Oh, Lance. Thank you_.

 _Wanna give it a try?_ He offers her his hand, and it feels like laying it in hers, and it feels like that thing that happens when he’s falling asleep sometimes where his limbs feel sort of cloudy and distant, and it feels like surrender and peace.

_Yes…yes, let’s see…_

He watches in bemusement as his arm lifts on its own, as his familiar hand spreads against the sky of Oriande, turns over, flexes fingers. He lifts his other hand, perfectly normally like it’s his own, and tickles his palm.

Allura laughs silvery in his head. _I can feel that!_

 _So can I._ He smiles. _Honestly, I think it’s be weirder if I couldn’t? I always hated novocaine._

There’s a nudge of a question, and a little spill of memory in answer, and just like that she knows what novocaine is and why he hated it, and okay, that’s just convenient.

He grins, gives her the rest of his body just because, and she sits up, runs her hands down his legs, and then swallows, licks her lips—and okay, not having any control is a little strange, and he realizes rather suddenly that he doesn’t want to lose his sight, hearing, sensation, and Allura squeezes protectively around his soul. _Never. I won’t lock you out of your body like that._

 _Okay._ He squeezes back. _Thanks._

She runs his hand up his arm, and he tingles like someone else is touching him, goosebumps in the breeze, and he feels her slow, dangerous smile. _Well, then_ , she drawls, and he laughs, bright and nervous, and then some of it comes out because she gives him his mouth back. Just his mouth.

 _Oh, holy shit, I’m doomed._ The tumble of images goes both ways, apparently. He feels his face heat. Reflexive stuff like that isn’t under her control, he guesses? _Would that count as sex or masturbation?_

 _Yes_ , she says brightly, and then his hand moves to his mouth, feeling his lips. _You’re very thirsty. In the normal sense, I mean, not just—yes._

_How long have I been here?_

_I…don’t quite know, sorry._

_Well then. Let’s go back._

 

* * *

 

When the jet of the white hole sends him tumbling back out into real space, stomach gnawing with sudden and equally real hunger, the _Atlas_ is hanging great and white at the edge of the power-draining field, and his helmet buzzes with an immediate hail.

“ _—ome in, Lance. Come in._ ” It’s Shiro’s voice, his Captain voice, firm and professional, but there might be an edge of worry through the static of the white hole.

“I’m here,” he breathes. The world spins as a wave of energy catches him, and he pulses his jets to right himself, and the power indicator flashes low in the corner of his helmet. “I’m fine. Jets running low.”

“ _What the hell kind of a crazy stunt_ ,” mumbles Iverson’s voice in the background, and then Veronica’s cuts through that.

“ _Leandro Alejandro I swear to god if I ever again have to explain to our mother that you jumped into a white hole—_ ”

He winces. “Hi, Veronica.”

“ _Keith’s coming out to get you_ ,” Shiro says. “ _Hold trajectory. And welcome back._ ”

“ _—you could have told us what you were doing, I shouldn’t’ve had to pry it out of Acxa, just disappearing like that without a note after everything—god. Lance. Did you even realize—we feared the worst._ ”

Guilt stabs, low and sharp. “I…sorry. No. It wasn’t like that. I just had to see, I didn’t know how to explain…”

A small dark shape blurs against the stars. Purple light. Keith in his Blade suit, whisker-stripes shining on his mask, diving out with nothing but a long line back to the Atlas and his knife sheathed on his back.

“Stop jumping out of ships you,” Lance starts, and stops. Shit. Had it really looked like that, like he’d gone and given up after a year and change without her?

“ _Not like you can talk_ ,” Keith mutters over the coms, and scoops him up in a rescue hold like a pouncing falcon. “ _I’ve got him, Shiro. Reel us in._ ”

For a long moment, as the line pulls taut and reverses, Lance just breathes deep and shaky in Keith’s uncannily strong arms, and sees the glint of his marks reflect off the inside of his helmet, and tries to figure out how to explain this, her, anything. The _Atlas_ rises close above them, directional lights blinking towards a small personnel airlock off one of the landing bays, and relief bubbles hot and wet in his throat.

“Permission to come aboard, Captain,” he breathes.

“ _Permission granted, Lance. Always._ ”

“Is…is Coran with you? He—I need to see him—”

“ _He’s already on his way to the docking bay. Veronica, with me_. _Mitch, you have the bridge._ ”

“ _Damn straight, sir_ ,” Veronica breathes, fervent.

 

* * *

 

The landing bay is a mass of excitement, and Veronica and Shiro are just at the door, and Coran’s an orange blur moving closer, and then he stops still with a gasp when Lance pulls off his helmet with the marks lighting on his cheeks.

Lance opens his mouth and Allura shapes his words, lightening his tone, the lilt of her accent. “Coran…oh, Coran, it’s me, I’m inside him.”

“A…Allura?” he chokes, eyes widening, and there’s echoes of it all around the docking bay, and some raw look on Shiro’s face that Lance has never seen.

Allura moves his feet, flinging them against Coran’s chest, but the giddy smile, the tears of toy—that’s both of them together. “I’m right here,” she croaks, then squeaks as he bodily lifts them, spinning them around with Lance’s armored legs dangling. “I’m right here.”


End file.
